Historic review: Reconstructed Town Creek national site takes visitors back 1,000 years

It’s easy to imagine that you’ve stepped back in time as you approach the wall that rings the Indian mound at Town Creek.

It reminds me of frontier forts made of wood, like those seen in old Western movies.

But this wall (well, one similar to it) is made of pointed timbers plastered with wattle and daub. The people who built a ceremonial center on a bluff overlooking a river thrived here from 1200-1400 C.E. They lived hundreds of years before gunslingers roamed the American West — and 200 years before the English established their first permanent settlement in Jamestown.

Town Creek was a gathering spot for feasts and religious ceremonies. An earthen mound inside the wall was the center of the Pee Dee universe.

Archaeologists call them the Pee Dee because they ranged over an area now known as the Pee Dee River Valley, but they were part of a larger tradition called South Appalachian Mississippian, a culture that flourished across the eastern half of the Southeastern United States.

They were farmers and traders. Their craftsmen made stamped pottery. They built mounds for their spiritual and political leaders.

Long after the Pee Dee people disappeared, that ancient mound was a nuisance to a farmer in southwestern Montgomery County named L.D. Frutchey, who had to plow around it. Whenever he plowed, people usually showed up to search for arrowheads and other artifacts.

Frutchey got tired of the trouble and was thinking about taking the mound down and redistributing the soil to fill in low spots elsewhere on his property. State officials heard about the notion and high-tailed it to pay a visit. They persuaded him the site was of historic significance and he eventually donated a little more than an acre of land to the state. That was in 1937. Later, the state bought another 50 acres from the Frutchey family and a neighbor.

For 50 years, archaeologists studied the soil at Town Creek, cataloguing bits of bone and stone and pieces of shells and pottery, examining what was found in hearths and trash pits, documenting the burials (more than 200 are recorded) and excavating the mound.

“There are very few mounds preserved like this (one was),” says site manager, Rich Thompson.

They used the information (as well as information uncovered at other sites by archaeologists and first-hand accounts from European visitors to some sites) to reconstruct Town Creek, rebuilding the earthen mound with a thatch-roofed town house on top; they also built a rectangular lodge and a round burial hut.

“It’s a full-scale replica of what it may have looked like,” Thompson says. “It’s a neat way to try to step back in time. Every place they put a post in the ground, we have a record of it. We can tell where the buildings stood and we know their dimensions. Anything above ground is guesswork.”

That guesswork is reflected in a tableau in the burial hut that depicts the burial of a child and in the Visitors Center, which features audiovisual programs and interpretive exhibits, including the busts of a Pee Dee man and woman, reconstructed from remains excavated in 1942.

Town Creek became a state historic site in 1955 — the only one of 27 dedicated to Indian heritage — and earned designation as a National Historic Landmark in 1964. Some 20,000-25,000 people, many of them schoolchildren studying North Carolina history, visit annually.

The site hosts a number of special events throughout the year. One of the newer offerings — a firelight tour — will be held on Oct. 27 from 7:30-9:30 p.m. On that night, Town Creek staff will take visitors on guided tours of the site. There will be an outdoor fire inside the walled compound and fires inside two of the reconstructed buildings.

“By offering tours at night,” Thompson says, “it gives visitors a different impression, helping folks to visualize a little bit what Town Creek looked like a thousand years ago before we had streetlights and all these modern conveniences.”

Fire was essential to the Pee Dee way of life — as a source of heat and to cook their food.

“They had these fires in their huts pretty much 24 hours a day, year round,” Thompson says.

The fire burning night and day in the town house atop the mound was perhaps even more important.

“As long as they had that fire going,” he says,” the universe was in balance.”

Self-guided tours are available 9 a.m.-5 p.m. on Tuesday-Saturday; and 1-5 p.m. on Sunday. Admission is free.

Directions

The site is located in Montgomery County, 5 1/2 miles from Mt. Gilead on Town Creek Mound Road. Signs point the way south from N.C. 731 and north from N.C. 73. The site is about 1 1/2 hours from Greensboro and Charlotte and 2 hours from Raleigh and Durham.